Introducing TrueScore: Know Your Real Game

Your handicap index tells you one number. But every golfer knows the real story is more nuanced. Some days you play above your handicap. Some days you play below it. The question has always been: how do you actually measure that?

We built TrueScore to answer it.

TrueScore is our proprietary scoring model that calculates your expected score for any round based on course rating, slope, and how many holes you played. Unlike a simple handicap index, TrueScore gives you a shot-by-shot, round-by-round view of how you're performing. It accounts for the difficulty of the course you're playing and scales proportionally whether you're out for nine holes or a full eighteen.

Here's how it works. Every time you post a round, we run it through the TrueScore engine. We factor in the course rating and slope from the tees you played, then generate an expected score for that specific round. Your actual score gets compared to that expectation. Over time, you start to see a clear picture: are you consistently beating your expected score, or falling short?

That's where the Sandbagger Index comes in. It's the companion metric to TrueScore. The Sandbagger Index shows whether you tend to play above or below your expected level. If you're always shooting better than TrueScore predicts, your Sandbagger Index reflects that. If you're coming in higher than expected, it shows that too. No more guessing. No more "I swear I usually play better than that."

On your profile page, you'll find interactive charts that display your TrueScore history and trend over time. You can see how your game has evolved, which rounds were outliers, and whether you're trending up or down. The charts handle nine-hole and eighteen-hole rounds correctly thanks to proportional scaling — we don't treat a quick nine as half an eighteen. We treat it as exactly what it is.

TrueScore is live now. Head to your profile, scroll to the analytics section, and see your real game laid out in front of you.